Christmess Girl
by Grumpy Blowfish
Summary: It's that time of the year again, and Natalia is looking forward to spending a lovely evening with her new family and friends. But how is she going to do that with Alex Wesker's voice in her head whispering evil things and trying to turn Christmas into a horrible ChristMESS? Rated T for strong language.
1. Act I

**Christmess Girl**

Act I

 _"... Now it was really no longer a joke, and Gregor forced himself, come what might, into the door. One side of his body was lifted up. He lay at an angle in the door opening. His one flank was sore with the scraping. On the white door ugly blotches were left. Soon he was stuck fast and would have not been able to move any more on his own. The tiny legs on one side hung twitching in the air above, the ones on the other side were pushed painfully into the floor. Then his father gave him one really strong liberating push from behind, and he scurried, bleeding severely, far into the interior of his room. The door was slammed shut with the cane, and finally it was quiet."_

Barry, too, went quiet after that.

"Go on!" Natalia urged him.

"Nah... I think that's enough craziness for today, honey," he said. "Since when are you so interested in Franz Kafka's works? Do you really like creepy stories about men turning into giant bugs? Haven't you had enough of those on Zabytij Island?"

"I don't know... There's something interesting about it, don't you think? And there's a lot of truth in this story as well. People only like you as long as you're someone they know. But as soon something bad happens to you, as soon as you change... they quickly let go even of their dearest friends."

"And you fear someone could actually turn into a giant bug?"

"After everything we've been through, do you not? It's happened before."

Barry shook his head, laughing. "I would never let go of you, Natalia. Or any of my daughters. But you should really go to sleep now. We have a long day ahead of us."

"Thanks, Barry."

She still had trouble calling the old man her father, even though that was exactly what he had been to her since he saved her from that horrible island. He and his wife Kathy had become parental substitutes to Natalia, who had been orphaned at an age too young to actually remember her real parents. They had died in a floating city overrun by bioterrorism, and an entire island overrun by bioterrorism was the place she had encountered Barry for the first time when she was nine.

Now, two years later, she was a full-fledged member of the Burton family. Moira and Polly were her big sisters, and they took turns at reading bedtime stories to her like Barry had just a minute ago. Everyone was so nice and welcoming, it was like she had lived in this house since forever.

But something wasn't right about all this, and she had yet to come up with a way of explaining it to her new family.

"Do you want me to leave the small light on?" Barry asked as he walked out of the room.

"No, thanks. I'm a big girl now. And if I do get scared, I still have Lottie to take care of me," Natalia explained, clinging to the stuffed brown bear in her arms.

"Alright, then. Good night."

It was the night before Christmas in the year 2013, and tomorrow would be a special day. Not just because of the occasion, but also because Natalia would get to meet Barry's, and in a way also her own, extended family. Claire Redfield was already friends with Natalia, but they hadn't seen each other in ages. On the other hand, Claire's brother Chris and his partner Jill Valentine were people she had only heard stories of – quite exciting ones to say the least – but never met in person. That was going to change, because they were invited to join the Burtons on Christmas Eve.

And that was the "long day" Barry had been talking about. There was a lot to prepare, and Natalia was eager to help, so she figured it would really be best to fall asleep quickly.

Despite everything she had experienced at her young age, the traumatic memories of living without parents, Zabytij Island and other horrors, she usually didn't have trouble sleeping. But that had changed recently. There was a part of her that just wouldn't stick to the rules she and other members of her family had established. And that was the big secret she couldn't talk about to anyone.

"Why are you closing your eyes, Natalia? You're not going to sleep now, are you? You're not even tired."

"Go away..."

It always started like that.

"Are you going to waste time in bed just because the old fart told you to? Come on! There's so much more exciting stuff you could be doing right now."

"Not interested!"

"Really? So you wouldn't like to find out what your Christmas gifts will be a day early?"

Natalia opened her eyes and rolled them before sitting up. There she was, sitting in front of the mirror, or rather, _in_ the mirror, staring at her from the other side. She always appeared in that same dark purple dress, her hair in a braid, the way Natalia herself preferred to wear it, but blonde. Her skin was also paler, her eyes brighter, she basically looked like a scary ghost version of Natalia, an effect further emphasized by the dim, white light of the moon falling in through the window.

"Come on, hurry up!" she said. "Let's find out what's under the tree for us."

"You mean, for _me_ ," Natalia corrected her. "You're not part of this family!"

The girl in the mirror that wasn't really her mirror image rolled her eyes. "But I am you! The sooner you accept that, the sooner we can stop arguing and start having fun."

"You and I don't have the same definition of that word. And you're not me!"

"Fine! Whatever you need to tell yourself."

Natalia's condition was the result of an experiment she had unwillingly taken part in back on the island. A scientist called Alex Wesker, obsessed with the idea of becoming immortal by transferring her mind into the body of a younger, healthier vessel, had chosen her to be that vessel, and succeeded despite the combined efforts of Barry, Moira and Claire to stop her. Alex had long since passed away physically, blown up by Claire after transforming into a horrible monster, but her mind was still there, living on in this new body and constantly trying to take control over it. So far Natalia hadn't succumbed to her influence – hell, she hadn't even realized anything was off for almost eighteen months. But then, half a year ago, Alex had started talking to her, first in her sleep, then only at night, and now she could do it whenever she pleased. And she never stopped, getting more and more intrusive as time went by. She was also the reason for Natalia's sudden interest in the disturbing works of a certain late European author.

But as annoying as she was, sometimes she actually had useful ideas. No matter how much she tried to deny it, Natalia _was_ curious. Not only about what she herself would get, but also the others. Even after two years in this household where people were gifting each other on every possible occasion – Christmas, birthdays, Valentine's Day, anything really – the concept of giving and receiving presents was still new to her.

So what was she going to do? Go back to bed and try to sleep even though she wasn't even tired? Or go outside and take a peek? There was nothing wrong with a little peek after all, was there?

"What do you think, Lottie?" she asked her stuffed bear.

Lottie just looked at her with those big, black eyes, not saying anything. For some reason she was unusually quiet tonight.

"That's what you get for asking a toy's opinion," Alex mocked her.

Of course that stupid ghost would never understand the connection Natalia had with Lottie. But the bear never broke its stubborn silence, so Natalia decided for herself and quickly got out of bed.

"I knew you couldn't resist!" Alex said triumphantly from beyond the looking glass.

"Just as I knew you couldn't keep your mouth shut. Now don't say another word! I'm already doing what you're asking."

"Good girl. Next time ask me right away instead of that stupid bear. You know, I think it's actually a good thing he doesn't talk too much. If memory serves me right, the last thing he ever said to you was something along the lines of _Gosh-arooney, you little bitch!_ What does that even mean? Not a very educated bear, is he?"

"Lottie is a she." Why did Natalia constantly have to remind everyone of that little fact? She didn't remember the last time she had run into a _boy_ named Lottie.

"Whatever," Alex said dismissively. "And then _it_ dropped dead... how sad! Then again, it had been suicidal before, which doesn't surprise me at all. I would be too if I had to spend my life with a boring girl that deliberately misses out on all the fun... But that's what I'm doing right now anyway, isn't it? And it's not like I can just kill myself like Lottie."

"Oh, I wish you would!"

"But then you would die too. We don't want that, do we?"

"Well, I'm not missing out on any fun right now, so there's nothing for you to complain about. Come along if you have to, but be quiet already!"

Being the baby of the family and as many as eight years younger than the person closest to her in age, Natalia was, of course, the only one in the household who had to go to bed that early. Her room had been a guest room before she moved in, and was the last door in a long corridor on the upper floor of the house, which meant she had to get past everybody else's open bedrooms without being spotted.

Due to her adventures on Zabytij Island, she did have quite some experience in regards to being stealthy, but it wasn't quite as easy with normal humans as with BOWs. People that hadn't been infected with any artificially created viruses didn't have that colorful aura around them that she usually saw on monsters, even through walls. So when she got close to the rooms of her sisters, which were on opposite sides of the corridor – both doors wide open, of course – she had to stay still for a while and rely on her normal human abilities, especially her sense of hearing.

"Have you seen my phone, sis?" Moira shouted from her room.

"No... Want me to call you?" Polly asked.

"I already tried that, but the fucking thing must be out of juice. Just when I misplaced it... ugh, fucking technology!"

Polly laughed. "How did you manage to always find your hunting weapons back on that island when you can't even remember where you put your phone?"

But Moira didn't stop whining. "How am I supposed to send Christmas greetings to my friends without my phone?"

" _Maybe_ you could write cards?"

" _Maybe_ you could stop making fun of me and help me look for it?"

"Alright, alright! I'm coming."

"That was your cue to hide!" Alex unnecessarily warned Natalia, her reflection in the window at the end of the corridor overseeing her every move.

Thank God Kathy was an interior designer who couldn't stand boring, empty corridors, so there was a piece of furniture here and there for Natalia to hide behind. It was the first time since she had moved in that she was glad about the presence of the useless cabinet between her door and Moira's, the only purposes of which usually were to look pretty and get in the way. Thanks to it, Polly didn't see Natalia when she left her room and walked over into her older sister's.

It was quite amazing how well those two managed to get along, despite their diverging personalities. Moira was a rebellious tomboy with short, dark hair who took after her father in many ways, swearing a lot and generally distrusting strangers, a major difference being that she didn't share Barry's enthusiasm for guns after one of them had almost gotten her sister killed in the past. Polly, on the other hand, was kind and very girly, interested in aesthetics and a healthy lifestyle, just like her mother, who she had also inherited her blond curls from. She usually straightened her hair, though, sometimes colored it as well, which was no surprise considering that she had just begun her training to become a hairdresser, already dreaming of setting up her very own beauty salon someday.

Moira and Polly really didn't have an awful lot in common, but they were known to stick together in the most difficult of times, such as when one of them was desperately searching for her phone. Natalia left them at that and sneaked by their rooms while they were busy trying to find Moira's most prized possession in the most unusual places.

Next was the master bedroom, the place where presents were usually stored... at least until last year, when curiosity had gotten the best of three sisters, resulting in them spontaneously deciding not to wait for the evening. So it wasn't the first time in this house that someone was sneaking about in their pajamas looking for something to ruin their own surprise. Of course, Barry and Kathy had taken precautions to assure it wouldn't happen again anytime soon, so this year they had moved the presents to another location. Too bad for them, however, Natalia knew exactly where that was, and it was a pretty good hiding spot, leaving her to wonder why they hadn't always kept the presents there.

But before she could go there, she had to get past her parents' bedroom first, and that wasn't going to be an easy task, because Kathy was inside. Kathy Burton, the woman who had never gotten involved with any viruses that could cause her body to mutate, but still seemed to have eyes everywhere, seeing everything.

"You could always throw a smokescreen bottle, you know..." Alex whispered into Natalia's ear.

"Sure! Because I just unlocked the skill to make them magically appear in my hand, and it wouldn't be suspicious at all."

"Oh snap! How sarcastic! I didn't even know you had that in you, Natalia."

"Hush! Listen... Do you hear that?"

Someone was snoring softly in the master bedroom. It definitely wasn't Barry, though, because when _he_ snored, it sounded like a chainsaw next to a bullhorn. Natalia carefully leaned forward to take a look – and there she was, on the bed, fallen asleep over reading a book.

"Great! Katwoman is asleep. Now all you have to do is get the old fart's keys and make it to the storm shelter," Alex said.

"I know," Natalia said, walking past the door and towards the stairs. "But... where is Barry? If he catches me..."

"He won't," Alex reassured her. "You know how many times that ugly old monster version of me sneaked by him when he was looking for the militant lesbian on the island? No? Neither does he. That's how blind he is."

Even after all those months, Natalia still rolled her eyes at the way Alex kept making fun of her family, especially with her mean nicknames. Polly, the one she hated the most because she thought of her as stupid, had been given a whole bunch of them over the last few months, until Alex had finally settled for Poo. She had justified her decision by pointing out that she called Barry an old fart, and sometimes, when you fart carelessly, a little bit of poo comes out as well; that was how she said Polly must have come into existence. Then there was Moira, who she called a militant lesbian just because of the short hair, and Kathy was Katwoman. Natalia was already wondering how Alex was going to defile the names of the guests they were expecting the next day.

But for now she had bigger problems. The staircase led directly into the living room, and Barry was down there, watching the sports channel on TV.

"Don't worry about it," Alex said. "He's already very inattentive when he's not concentrating on anything, let alone when he's distracted by gay porn."

"It's not porn. It's football."

"It's a bunch of sweaty men leaping at each other and grabbing balls. I don't care what you want to call it, just keep moving!"

"But I can't! Don't you see his keys on the table? I need them to get inside the storm shelter! He'll see me if I take them."

"Then get him out of the living room, duh!"

Natalia went down as quietly as possible, minding every step because the stairs were quite old and noisy. Thankfully, Barry was a very enthusiastic football fan who started bawling whenever his favorite team scored a goal, or got close to doing so, so his powerful voice often drowned out the creaking of the stairs.

"Ugh, men can be such simple-minded creatures!" Alex scoffed. "How can you get _this_ excited about some dude throwing a ball? What a freak!"

"... says the woman whose hobby is stitching together dead body parts to create undead abominations and sending them out to kill humans until only one survives that she can transfer her soul into," Natalia retorted. "You of all people should be very careful who you call a freak!"

"Well, if I could do that right now and place a revenant in the garden, that would at least give the old fart a reason to leave the room and you an opportunity to get his keys, so don't undermine the usefulness of my hobbies."

"If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't be all doing this in the first place!"

"See? My positive influence is noticeable in every little thing you do. You should be thanking me instead of complaining, you ungrateful brat! But if you don't like my idea, here's another one: Go to the kitchen."

"Why?"

"Shut up and do as I say!"

The kitchen was easy to reach without entering Barry's field of vision.

"Look under the table," Alex instructed Natalia as soon as she got there.

Due to the darkness in the room, it took Natalia a while to see what Alex wanted her to find. It was a black smartphone with pink stripes that she recognized at once.

"That's Moira's! How did it get there?"

"I wouldn't know..." Alex shrugged her shoulders in the kitchen window.

But Natalia saw right through her. "It was you! You hid it here, and now you're silently laughing at Moira looking for it upstairs! I'm going to give it back to her..."

"No, you're not! Or do you want me to take control again?"

That was a threat Natalia couldn't ignore. Alex had done this before, and she could do much worse by taking control over the body they were sharing. Natalia had yet to figure out if Alex could do it at will or if certain requirements had to be met, probably the latter, but sometimes it just happened, and she couldn't always remember everything afterward. Likewise, she had no memory of how Moira's phone had gotten under the table, and why Alex would put it there of all places.

"Take it and call your house phone," Alex said.

"But you heard Moira, it's out of juice!"

"No, it isn't, I just switched it off so she wouldn't recover it all too quickly. Now switch it back on and call. Old fart thinks you're asleep, so is Katwoman, and the girls are busy. He's the only one who can pick up the phone."

"And you think he will? While there's football on TV?" Natalia was skeptical.

"It could be his friends calling to cancel on him. That's something he would want to know, even if it means missing a few seconds of his gay porn. Long enough for you to get in and out with the keys."

"Fine! But after that we're giving Moira's phone back."

"Don't even think of it! If you do that, I will take control again and smash it against the wall!"

Whatever plan Alex had come up with that she needed the phone for, she wouldn't let anything get in her way. Natalia sighed, but there was nothing she could do, so she called the right number and waited.

The house phone was in the lower corridor next to the front door, so Barry had to leave the living room to reach it. After shouting the entire house down, unsuccessfully trying to get someone else to take the call, he finally got up from the couch, swearing under his breath while hurrying outside. There was no one on the phone, though, so his efforts were in vain, and when he returned to the living room, he was so busy catching up on what he had missed of the match that he didn't even notice his keys were missing.

Opening and closing the front door was no issue, it was yet another sound drowned out by the TV and Barry's very vocal fanboyism. It was pretty cold outside, so Natalia decided to hurry. Opening the hatch in the garden, she finally gained access to the storm shelter where Barry and Kathy were keeping the presents for their children, friends and each other, only two of which were already wrapped. But even with those that weren't, it was quite easy figuring out who was going to get what.

"Let's see..." Natalia took a closer look. "Polly is into fashion, so I'm pretty sure the pink designer purse is hers. This chocolate box and that book called _History of the Motorbike_ must be for Claire, since she loves both sweets and bikes. I'm not sure about the sandwich maker and the collection of comic books about boulder-punching superheroes, but Moira is probably getting these discs."

"Discs? What does the militant lesbian need discs for?" Alex wondered.

"There's rock music on them. Moira likes rock. And Polly hates it!"

"Okay, so now we know what everyone else will be getting. But where is _our_ present?"

That was indeed a legitimate question. There was nothing in the storm shelter that looked like something they were going to give to Natalia.

"They probably wrapped it already," she assumed, looking at the wrapped presents. That didn't seem very likely, however. One of them clearly had the shape of a bottle, so it probably contained alcohol for Barry's adult friends, the other was small and square-shaped and had a tag reading _Kathy_ stuck to it.

"Don't fool yourself!" Alex said. "They've probably forgotten about you. Not surprising, considering that you've only been with them for two years, and they love their other daughters a lot more."

"That's not true! I'm sure there's a logical explanation."

"I just gave you that logical explanation. Now you just have to accept it. Well... Maybe you should go back to bed and huddle up to your stupid bear. It seems to be your only friend after all."

Natalia couldn't help feeling disappointed. What if it _was_ true? What if they had indeed forgotten about her? She didn't want to let Alex know what she was thinking, but of course that foreign conscience in her already knew.

"You know what we will do? Ruin Christmas for your so-called family! That will be your revenge. They don't care about you, and now you're going to show them how little _you_ care. The right to be happy is not theirs if it isn't yours as well."

"No, I'm not going to do that! Shut up already!"

"Make me!"

But Natalia wasn't strong enough to fight with Alex tonight. She had gotten tired after all and decided to go to bed, hoping she'd wake up tomorrow and find the logical explanation she couldn't find right now. But of one thing she was sure: No matter what happened, she would not let Alex ruin Christmas!


	2. Act II

Act II

Natalia woke up to the moaning and groaning of arguing people.

"What in the _cock_ is going on here?" Moira shouted.

"No idea!" Polly's voice. "I never thought she would do something like this!"

"I told you a hundred times..."

"Yes, yes, I know! And I told her. But what am I supposed to do if she won't listen?"

A cold shiver ran down Natalia's spine as she sat up straight in her bed.

"What did you do?" she demanded, looking at the mirror across the room where she didn't see anything but her own natural reflection.

No answer. The girl in the mirror didn't even bother to show herself.

"Alex!"

And then she appeared anyway, wearing the dark purple dress as usual, rolling her eyes. "First you want me to shut up, now you want me to talk. Make up your damn mind!"

"What did you do?" Natalia repeated her question. "While I was asleep?"

"I was asleep with you, of course. What else?"

"My sisters are arguing! You must have done something!"

"Why don't you just go outside and ask them what they're arguing about? And next time, do that _before_ you blame me for no reason!"

 _For no reason_ , she said... Natalia would have laughed out loud if she hadn't been so worried. She had been sneaking about the house last night, thanks to the evil part of her personality not allowing her to sleep before she had seen her Christmas presents, then it turned out there was nothing to be seen, causing Alex to vow revenge for being neglected – and this morning, all of a sudden, people were arguing. That couldn't be a coincidence.

"You took control over my body and did something evil!" Natalia accused Alex, convinced that she was right. "It's someone female they're talking about!"

Alex rolled her eyes again. " _Everybody_ in this house except for the old fart is female. For all we know, the culprit could be their mother. And the only way you're ever going to find out what really happened and who they're complaining about is by going out there and confronting them about it. So what are you waiting for?"

Unfortunately she was right. Natalia had to find out what "in the _cock_ " was going on, and she couldn't do so by just sitting on her bed and wondering. So she got up, gathered all her courage, opened the door and went outside.

"What's up?" she asked her sisters in the corridor, trying to sound as innocent as possible, and probably looking all the more suspicious.

"You might as well just stamp _GUILTY_ across your forehead and be done with it," Alex whispered mockingly.

"Oh! I'm sorry, Natalia. Did we wake you up?" Polly asked.

"It's good if we did!" Moira said sternly. "She should see this too. And learn from it."

"Moira, you're exaggerating..."

"No! I'm not putting up with this fucking bullshit anymore. And neither should you! Let's throw her out already, as we should have a year ago!" Moira shouted, stomping furiously back into her room.

No, they were definitely not talking about Kathy.

Polly sighed. "Come on, Natalia. You might want to see this..."

Natalia swallowed, expecting the worst as she went after Polly. What the hell had Alex done to piss Moira off so bad that she wished for her new sister to be thrown out? Did it have anything to do with that stupid phone?

No, it wasn't the phone. It was worse.

"I didn't do that!" Natalia quickly clarified, startled at the sight of Moira's expensive laptop lying in pieces on the parquet floor of her room.

"Of course not! Why should you?" Moira pointed her finger at Polly. "It was _her_ fucking cat!"

"She's not _my_ cat, she's _our_ cat!" Polly said.

"But it was you who wanted her!"

"Well, I was so sad after Joseph died, so I thought..."

"I don't give a moist barrel of fucks what you thought! That little asshole has to go!"

Natalia felt as if the weight of the entire world had just fallen from her shoulders. "Great!" she said with a smile, immediately causing the others to look at her funny, so she put that smile away rather quickly. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for, little sis," Moira said, suddenly sounding a lot friendlier, though still upset. "You're a good girl. And I want this to be a lesson for you: Never allow that dirty, vandalizing fleabag in your room or you will regret it!"

There was some truth in what she said about their pet. It was the second cat in the Burton household, named after the first one who had in turn been named after a late friend and teammate of Barry's, Joseph Frost. Back in 1998, years before Natalia's birth, Joseph had been killed in what would later become known as the Mansion Incident of Raccoon City. To honor him, Barry had adopted a cat about two years later, but last year he, too, had died peacefully of old age. This new female version, called Josephine or Jo for short, was doing a horrible job replacing him, as all she did was cause trouble. And now she had nearly caused a heart attack as well.

"You should get dressed now, Natalia," Polly said. "I'll help Moira clean up this mess, and after that I hope I will be able to stop her from wringing Jo's neck..."

"Oh, there she is!" Moira said when the endangered cat appeared at her doorstep, making herself comfortable on the floor and licking herself as if nothing had happened. "Go jump on a dildo, you piece of shit!"

Jo immediately stopped caring about her hygiene and ran away to dodge the pillow Moira was throwing at her.

That was when Barry apparently got fed up with the noise upstairs and shouted from the living room: "Don't be so loud, and you don't fucking swear like that in my house, especially not on fucking Christmas Eve, understood?"

Upon returning to her room, Natalia was surprised to see that Jo had sought refuge on her bed, hiding under a pillow like the one Moira had just tried to hit her with.

"Poor kitty! But why did you break Moira's laptop? I can understand her being mad at you now."

Even though the black cat was a little troublemaker, she and Natalia usually got along. Or at least they had until recently. It had to be a side effect of Alex's presence, or at least that was the only explanation Natalia could think of, because around the same time Alex had started talking to her, Jo had hissed at her for the first time, and she still did it occasionally. The cat had also stopped coming to this room, which was the reason Natalia was so surprised to find her here now, but apparently no place was bad enough to be avoided when it came to escaping Moira's violent, pillow-throwing rage.

"I think you owe me an apology," said that deep voice that belonged to Alex.

"Sorry," Natalia said halfheartedly while approaching the window to look at the beautiful snowflakes fluttering from the sky outside. There had not been any snow the day before, but the town had transformed into a winder wonderland overnight.

"That won't do it," Alex said. "I can't let you off the hook that easily."

"You don't need to forgive me. If you don't like it here, feel free to leave."

"I have a better idea. Have you ever heard of double jeopardy? It's a rule in court that prohibits charging a person with the same crime twice."

"So?"

"So, since you've already blamed me for causing trouble when it was really the fleabag on your bed, I can now go and actually do what you accused me of without fearing any repercussions. But... I guess the part about the repercussions is redundant anyway. Because it won't be me they will be looking at reproachfully... It will be you!"

"What?" Natalia quickly turned around and watched in horror as her dark mirror image suddenly stepped through the looking glass. "No! Leave me alone!"

"Too late!" Alex was coming, and there was no avoiding her. Within seconds she had reached Natalia, stripping her of her ability to control her own body. Natalia was still there, seeing everything through her eyes just like before, still able to think and feel, but no longer making any decisions on her own.

"That's better!" she heard herself say, only that it wasn't her anymore. She and Alex had switched places, and for now she was nothing more than a voice in her own head.

The cat immediately hissed as Alex walked by to get to the wardrobe, to which Alex responded with a very intimidating smirk that caused Jo to jump off the bed and dart out of the room, apparently deciding that Moira's company was still safer for the time being.

Natalia watched helplessly as her hands reached out to open the wardrobe, and her mouth said: "What are we going to wear today?"

"It's Christmas! Behave yourself!" she said, her words being nothing but thoughts that couldn't do anything apart from making suggestions.

Suggestions that Alex didn't appreciate, of course. "No... I think this is a day of mourning because everyone except us will be getting presents tonight. And what do you wear when you're in mourning? That's right: black!"

Wearing the creepiest outfit she could find in Natalia's wardrobe, which of course wasn't overtly creepy, but still not very Christmassy either, Alex left the room to go and see where she could start causing trouble, as promised. The door to Moira's room was now closed, but she wasn't inside anymore as she could be heard swearing downstairs. She still hadn't found her phone, and that was seriously getting on her nerves now.

"Listen to this obscene abuse of the English language! That militant lesbian should wash her mouth with soap," Alex suggested.

The next thing they heard was Polly trying to calm Moira down.

"And Poo should _eat_ that same soap and die."

"Please don't hurt them!" Natalia said. "They're good people."

"Good people who don't even buy the baby of their family a present for Christmas."

"We still don't know that!"

"You also didn't _know_ yesterday that the sun was going to rise today, yet you still relied on it based on your past experiences, and you turned out to be right! There's no point in doubting the obvious."

Downstairs the girls were about to start decorating the Christmas tree and had just brought a variety of ornaments from the cellar. It was obvious that they were having a little disagreement.

"I want only red and silver baubles!" Polly insisted.

"We just had the red and silver theme last year!" Moira said. "In fact, we have that every year. Why can't we mix in some other colors for a change?"

"Because it's Christmas!" Polly argued. "And those are the colors of Christmas."

"If that was true, then there wouldn't even be any baubles of different color."

"See how they're arguing?" Alex asked.

"They're constantly arguing about little things," Natalia said.

"That's not what I mean. The point is that no one here was waiting for you. They don't care about your opinion when it comes to choosing the colors of the ornaments, and they were even about to start decorating the tree while you were still asleep for all they knew. Doesn't that make you feel a little... misplaced? Redundant? Unwanted?"

"Stop it!"

"Why? Oh, let me guess: The truth is painful, isn't it?"

"Natalia?" Kathy had appeared at the foot of the stairs. "Did you say something?"

"No," Alex said. "Good morning, Kathy!"

"It's good you're here. Your sisters are once again unable to come to an agreement, and it's driving me crazy! I still have to watch Barry in the kitchen so he doesn't create a mess with the turkey, so please do your thing and tell Moira and Polly what the tree is going to look like this year. Maybe they'll listen to you. I don't care as long as it's not completely out of place."

"Sure thing!"

"See?" Natalia said after Kathy had returned to the kitchen. "They _are_ interested in my opinion. It was the same last year, they were arguing about the decorations until I told them what to do. Last year I sided with Polly, so it's only fair that Moira gets her wish this time."

"Or maybe none of them will," Alex said. "I still have my opinion as well. And I hate the red and silver theme just as much as whatever Moira has planned."

"So what do you have in mind?"

"A second conscience that asks too many questions. Other than that, an idea."

"Hey, Natalia!" Polly was overjoyed to see her little sister had joined them in the living room. "Please back me up! You're the sensible one here, so tell Moira that we're not going to turn our Christmas tree into a peacock tail!"

"Of course not!" Moira said sarcastically. "Let's go with Polly's idea and use the same old boring theme as every year. Because change is bad!"

"You know what my favorite color is? White," Alex told them. "How about that for a change? No aggressive red, no other colors that don't really have anything to do with Christmas, just pure, innocent white, represented in the baubles, candles and lametta."

Of course she would suggest that. White was indeed her favorite color, Natalia had guessed as much from the clothes Alex had been wearing in her original human form.

Moira and Polly looked at each other for a second, then back to Alex and said at the same time: "That is even more boring than what _she_ said!"

"I'm sorry that you think so, but you can trust me," Alex reassured them. "White is all you need."

"Do as Natalia says! I don't want any more arguments about this," Kathy shouted from the kitchen just as her daughters were about to argue again.

"You heard your mother. Start decorating the tree, I will go to the cellar to see if I can find more beautiful white ornaments." With these word, Alex turned around and left the others alone.

"That's not the way to the cellar," Natalia told her when she was headed for the front door.

"I'm not going to the cellar," Alex admitted.

Before they went outside, Polly could be heard asking in the living room: "Have you ever heard her talk like that? _Aggressive red... Pure, innocent white..._ That's not how she usually speaks."

"Not really, no," Moira agreed. "And this strange attitude is a new one as well... Man, of course this year's Christmas had to be a fucked-up Christmas!"

"You don't even know _how_ fucked-up," Alex whispered as she opened the door.

"Why do you want them to use the white ornaments?" Natalia asked. "Did you prepare them in any way? Are they going to explode?"

"Of course not! What do you think of me? I only chose white because that's the color that apparently nobody likes. And I don't want anyone in this house to use the term _beautiful_ when they describe this year's tree."

Natalia would have rolled her eyes if she'd had control over them.

The snow was so thick that the entrance to the storm shelter stood out like a small island. That was where Alex was going. She still had Barry's keys – obviously no one had missed them since yesterday – and went down to wrap a few presents, taking her sweet time. Natalia was surprised at how helpful she was for a change, until she noticed that the names Alex put on the presents weren't those of their intended recipients.

"I'm just mixing things up a little. It's going to be more fun this way," Alex explained. Then she picked up Moira's phone that Natalia had left there the day before and started wrapping it as well.

"What are you doing?"

"The militant lesbian is desperately looking for this, right? At the moment there's nothing in the world that she wants more. So I've been thinking, why not make her happy and give it to her as a present? Especially since it's the only present she will get... See how nice I am? And you say I'm evil. Don't you think you should apologize again?"

"Ugh, you're such a troll! And you won't get away with this!" Natalia warned. "Don't you think Barry and Kathy will wonder how the presents got wrapped when neither of them ever took care of it?"

"No. Haven't you seen how busy they are? No time to notice such small inconsistencies. The old fart will just assume that Katwoman wrapped them, and vice versa."

"You seem quite sure of yourself."

"I am. And now let's see what we could do with this." Alex unwrapped the nameless present that was in the shape of a bottle. It turned out to be some very old wine.

"Be careful with that! It must have been expensive," Natalia said.

For once, Alex refrained from passing a snide remark, just took the bottle and left the storm shelter. Despite several questions from Natalia, she didn't reveal what she was planning on doing with the wine while she brought it to the kitchen. She waited until Kathy went outside and hid the wine in the fridge behind a few things that weren't going to be needed today while Barry was busy stuffing the turkey.

Then Kathy came back. "Natalia! Would you like to help me prepare the cinnamon cookies? I know how much you love baking."

"Do I?" Alex asked.

"Keep up the suspicious behavior, they will find you out eventually!" Natalia said.

"Oh, sure!" Alex acted like she had been just a little confused and remembered now. "Of course I'll help you. Cinnamon cookies are the best!"

"I'm glad to hear that!" Kathy said. "You didn't really like them last year, but you promised you were going to give them another try. So let's begin."

"But what about the old fa... I mean, Barry? Won't he need the oven for the turkey?"

"The cookies will be ready by the time he's done stuffing it."

"Don't be so sure about that!" Barry said. "I'm the master of turkey-stuffing."

"Then hurry up, my dear! There should be something on the table to fill Claire and the others' empty stomachs when they arrive."

Alex smiled, and Natalia's malicious glee at her evil twin's difficulties acting normal faded quickly when she realized that that was just another opportunity for Alex to screw up Christmas even more by ruining the food!

"Could you give me the powdered sugar and the cinnamon, please?" Kathy asked while she was making some space on the kitchen counter.

"Er... where was that again?" Alex asked.

"The cupboard above the sink."

Alex opened said cupboard and immediately saw the powdered sugar, but couldn't find the cinnamon. She placed a chair in front of the counter and climbed on it for a better overview.

"Help me out a little!" she whispered to Natalia.

"Over my dead body!" Natalia replied.

"Is everything alright, honey?" Kathy asked, thinking she was the one Alex was talking to. "The cinnamon is in that small jar behind the salt."

"Oh, right, there it is! You couldn't possibly have hidden it better."

"But you used to know where everything is. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm just... feeling a little tired... I don't know. I'm sure it will pass."

"It will pass once you let me take over again!" Natalia said.

Kathy looked worried. "Oh, my poor baby... Maybe you should get some more rest?"

"No, I'm fine!" Alex reassured her. "I want to help."

"Okay, but don't overexert yourself. You can prepare the glaze while I take care of the dough. Does that sound fun?"

"Yeah!"

"Just remember: Take one egg, beat it until it's stiff and keep adding powdered sugar."

"No problem. I can do that."

And so Alex started making the glaze, but even though the instructions were clear, and it wasn't really that difficult, she acted awkward and annoyingly slow.

"Gosh-arooney! Have you never cooked or baked anything for yourself?" Natalia asked, amused at Alex's ongoing struggle.

"Of course I have! I wouldn't trust anyone else with my food. But sweet crap like this? No," Alex replied while Kathy was explaining something to Barry and not listening. "How can anyone eat this without fearing that their teeth will fall out? I have to do something about this."

"Too bad for you, you can't! Kathy has eyes everywhere, remember? She will notice at once if you try anything funny."

"Not if she's not here..."

"Mom!" Polly suddenly called from the living room. "Come, quickly!"

"What is it?" Kathy asked.

"Er... nothing!" Moira replied, sounding insecure. "Just a little... mishap..."

"Oh dear!" Sighing, Kathy left the kitchen to take a look at whatever mess her daughters had created, causing Alex to smile again.

And then, realization struck Natalia. "You planned this! So you _did_ do something with those white baubles after all!"

"Not with the baubles..."

"What did you say?" Barry asked.

"Nothing, I'm just talking to myself."

The last obstacle in Alex's way was eliminated when Barry, too, was called to the living room shortly after his wife. As soon as he was gone, Alex took out the wine she had hidden in the fridge.

"So what _did_ you do?" Natalia demanded. "And if it's not the baubles, what is it then?"

"Let's just say, the lametta is a little... sticky," Alex explained while opening the bottle. "And of course I made sure Poo and the militant lesbian wouldn't notice until they had already thrown it all over the tree and made a mess everywhere."

"You're not going to drink that wine now, are you? Stop it, I'm not old enough!"

"Don't shit my pants, it's not going into our stomach. But it has to go. I need the bottle."

"It was supposed to be a present for someone!"

"And they shall have it! Just not in the way it was originally intended." Alex started pouring the wine into the turkey until the food was certainly no longer enjoyable, saved some for the glaze and then put the empty bottle back in the fridge before continuing to prepare the glaze with lots of salt instead of powdered sugar. Natalia was so shocked that she didn't even know what to say.

"What a waste, it was quite a good vintage." Alex sighed, almost sounding truly remorseful. But only almost. "Then again, the old fart used that kind of stuff to make firebombs on the island. Not much better either, and you already said you won't drink it anyway."

Once she was done "helping" Kathy and Barry by ruining both the main course and the dessert – of course without letting them know about any of that, the big surprise would only come later – Alex went to the garage where Barry kept his guns, filled the wine bottle with gunpowder and other dangerous stuff, brought it back to the storm shelter and wrapped it as a present once again. Then she returned the key so the others could go fetch the presents whenever they felt like it, and spent the next few hours silently laughing at everybody's discontent with the sticky, white tree and the ongoing search for Moira's phone.

In no time, Alex had managed to pave the way for a truly horrible Christmas Eve. And Natalia was powerless to stop her.


	3. Act III

Act III

The sun was quickly setting when a car could be heard closing in on the Burton home and parking in front of it. That had to be the guests. Things were going to get serious any moment now.

"Okay, you've been trolling this family long enough. Could you please let me take control again?" Natalia pleaded.

"Why should I, just when the party is about to get started?" Alex was sitting on the stairs, overseeing the living room and overhearing every word that was spoken in the kitchen. The tree was still sticky, but they couldn't do anything about it, so they had just agreed not to touch it, and no one liked the white decorations, as expected. The presents had been placed under the tree and were waiting to be unwrapped by the wrong recipients, the turkey wouldn't take long anymore, and the cookies were on the kitchen table, but no one had tasted them yet – well, no one except the cat who had stolen one from the plate while no one was watching. Apparently not a fan of too much salt and wine, she had vomited it out again on the floor, giving the Burtons another mess to clean up before the guests arrived.

Said guests were about to be welcomed by the various snowmen the family had built in the garden to kill time after everything had been prepared. The snowmen were supposed to be smiling and look happy, but of course Alex wouldn't have it, so she went over the snowy faces again afterward to make them look as grumpy as possible. And now she was sitting there, proud of all her hard work, waiting for the ultimate disaster to unfold.

"Please, you don't have to do this!" Natalia kept fighting to save whatever could still be saved. However, she was quickly running out of arguments to persuade Alex to give her body back.

To her big surprise, Alex suddenly said: "You know what? You're right! I've done everything I could. And I'll still be able to see how things play out even if I'm not controlling this body. So I'll let you take the helm again – and the blame! Let's see how you're going to justify your actions to your oh so lovely family..."

"Are you serious?" The moment Natalia said this, she realized her mouth was actually moving. Her voice was no longer just a thought. She could speak! And move. She was finally herself again.

Now there was no time to lose. There were a lot of things Alex had done that she needed to undo. But before she could even think of where to start, the doorbell rang.

"That should be them!" Barry declared joyfully as he left the kitchen to receive the guests.

That was when Natalia saw it. And when she saw it, she immediately forgot about the presents, the tree and the food. Whatever had rung the doorbell was not any of the guests Barry was expecting. It was a...

"Monster!" she shouted, running towards the door to block Barry's way.

"What?" He stopped, looking at her uncomprehendingly. "There are no monsters in this town."

"Yes, there are! And one of them is right behind that door! I can see it!"

There was no doubt. Her ability to sense the presence of BOWs was still intact, even though she hadn't used it for two years, and she could clearly see that suspicious yellow aura through the door.

"Better take this seriously, Dad," said Moira, coming out of the living room.

Barry, too, seemed alarmed now. "Alright. Go get me my revolver. Hope we won't have to deal with another outbreak on Christmas Eve!"

Moira made a face, but didn't hesitate. She still wasn't comfortable around guns, even though she had been forced to use them herself to stay alive for six months on Zabytij Island, but they were necessary in times like these. So she made her way to the garage as fast as she could while Barry carefully approached the door. The bell rang again.

"BOWs aren't usually smart enough to do that, are they?" he wondered, taking a look through the peephole.

And then he sighed with relief. "There's no monster outside, Natalia. Your power must be malfunctioning."

"But..."

It was too late to intervene. Barry opened the door and welcomed his visitors.

"I don't understand!" Natalia said to herself, looking into a familiar face as Claire greeted Barry with a hug, bringing a bag of presents into the house. The next person to enter was a tall, muscular man with the same auburn hair, probably her bother, and he wasn't the monster either.

But then there was this strange woman in blue with dark purple hair in a ponytail. She was the one with the yellow aura, and when she looked at Natalia with those light blue eyes, the aura suddenly turned red. Natalia stumbled backwards with a shriek.

"I'm coming!" Moira yelled from a few meters away, and then she stormed into the corridor, her father's Colt Python at the ready. When she couldn't find anything to shoot, she lowered the gun with a confused look on her face, but the damage was already done. Claire and the other two looked terrified, and Natalia could hear Alex laughing in her head.

"Er... right. Sorry for this little misunderstanding." Not knowing what else to do, Barry just ignored what had happened and introduced his guests. "Chris, Jill, you remember my eldest daughter, Moira. And this is the newest addition to our family, Natalia."

"Nice to meet you, Natalia," Chris said, holding out one of his huge bear paws to shake Natalia's tiny hand. "Barry has told me all about you."

He then went on to greet Moira with a clasp of hands. "Long time no see! When did you turn into a gun enthusiast?"

"I didn't, my sister just thought Dad's gun would go nicely with my outfit," Moira said. "How is Piers?"

"So that's Chris Redfield, huh?" Alex asked, sounding intrigued and annoyed at the same time. "The captain with the IQ of a banana and, hardly worth mentioning, Albert's murderer!"

"He's not a murderer, he saved the world from a man who was trying to destroy it."

"That's probably how you would describe his sister killing my monster form as well, isn't it? I see the murderer gene runs in their family."

"Yeah, just like the crazy gene runs in yours..."

"Hey, Little Miss!" Claire approached Natalia with the BOW woman in tow. "How are you? You seem a little unhappy. Is everything okay?"

"I'm okay," was all Natalia said, not bothering to explain her strange behavior because she couldn't think of a believable excuse anyway. And she certainly wasn't going to say that Chris and Claire's friend Jill inexplicably looked like a monster to her.

After this rather uncomfortable welcome, Moira led the three guests into the living room where they were greeted by Kathy and Polly as well. Barry stayed outside with Natalia to ask her about what had just happened.

"It's Jill! She's surrounded by that same aura I used to see around the monsters on the island," she explained.

"Ah!" Barry had a flash of insight. "I'm sorry, I should have told you about this earlier. You know that Jill is one of the survivors of the Raccoon City Incident, right?"

Natalia nodded.

"Well, she didn't get out of that city completely unscathed. She got infected with the T-virus and was treated with the vaccine before it was too late. However, traces of the virus are still remaining within her system till this day, and being experimented on by Albert Wesker for quite some time didn't make things better. That's probably what you're seeing when you look at her."

"But are you sure she's not going to mutate?"

"She's been living with the T-virus for fifteen years, never displaying any of the typical zombie symptoms, and was saved from Wesker four years ago. Don't worry, she won't mutate. Now come inside and try to act normal. I understand your concern, but there's really no reason for it."

Natalia waited for Barry to leave her alone, then she said to Alex: "See what I meant? Your lovely brother did this to her! Chris should be given a medal for killing him!"

"The past is in the past – let it go! But if you'd like to know the whole story, ask Jill about it. Now go join the others so I can see their stupid faces when they taste the wine turkey."

The turkey! Natalia had completely forgotten about that, and about everything else as well. How was she going to explain that to her family?

All she could do now was hope they wouldn't notice. The alcohol had been added before Barry had put the turkey in the oven. It must have been in there long enough for the fluid to evaporate.

As for the presents... well, it could be just a joke. The cookies were going to be disgusting, but Natalia was only a child, she could have confused the salt with the powdered sugar. It was both white, just like the sticky tree – and as long as nobody touched that, nothing bad was going to happen. When she thought about it, everything was really only half as bad as it seemed.

And everyone was in a good mood so far. Kathy went to the kitchen to check on the turkey while the others were chatting at the dinner table in the living room.

"I've been looking forward to this since Barry invited me," Chris said. "As you all know, I didn't get a chance to enjoy my last Christmas Eve..."

"The failed mission in Edonia? That was last year?" Barry asked. "Strange. I could have sworn it was much longer ago."

"Let's not talk about that today," Claire said. "I'm thankful that you and Piers survived, that's all that counts. Although I still feel sorry about the rest of the unit and their families. This certainly isn't a happy day for them..."

"Yeah... And I could easily have died with them, considering how I got my ass handed to me by that monster..." Chris shook his head. "Damn, I was almost..."

"... a Chris sandwich!" Barry, Jill, Claire and Chris himself finished his sentence all at the same time, immediately bursting into laughter. Moira just rolled her eyes, and Natalia didn't get the joke at all.

"I know what you mean, though," Jill said to Chris. "Thanks to Wesker, I wasn't able to celebrate Christmas for three years... and the fourth year, after I'd been saved, I spent the holidays in hospital because of my stupid therapy. Not that it helped! I'm still blonde, and that will forever remind me of what has happened, so I keep coloring my hair to not think about it all the time."

"Oh, I love your purple hair! It looks just like Moira's when I helped her color it last year!" Polly turned to her sister. "Will you show her the photo we took?"

Moira sighed. "I would, if could find my phone!"

Natalia sat down at the table, pleased with the temporary silence in her head, but of course, just when she thought about that, Alex had something to say again. "Since Jill likes coloring her hair so much, do you think red would suit her?"

What an innocent question. "Probably. Why?" Natalia asked under her breath, hoping the others wouldn't notice her talking to herself.

"Because there's an easy way to help with that, one that doesn't even require Poo's hairdressing skills. A knife to her skull is all we need."

Natalia sighed, but she should have known. Why did she even bother anymore? It was her who felt a knife in her skull, or at least the sword of Damocles hovering over her head when Kathy called "Dinner is ready!" from the kitchen, shortly before entering the room with the turkey on a big plate. It smelled delicious; hopefully that was how it tasted too.

"Good! I couldn't have waited any longer, I'm starving!" Claire said, making Natalia feel uncomfortable.

"I was expecting as much, but wait until you see the dessert!" Moira said, twisting the imaginary knife even more.

And then came the moment of truth. Barry carved the turkey, everyone helped themselves and took a bite. Fearing she might get drunk just by looking at the meat on her plate, Natalia waited to see the others' reactions, and she didn't like what she saw. Polly immediately contorted her face in disgust, Moira raised an eyebrow, Claire and Jill made a strange faces as well, Barry seemed surprised, but not necessarily in a bad way, and Kathy looked like she was going to throw up. The only one who apparently didn't notice anything off about the turkey was Chris.

"What's wrong with you guys?" he even asked the others when he saw their faces. "Don't you like it?"

Kathy shook her head. "Barry, what did you do?"

"I don't know what you mean," he said.

"The turkey tastes funny. That's what she means," Polly explained.

"Yeah, but... I can't explain how that happened! I didn't add any alcohol to it!"

"At least not enough..." Chris remarked.

So the wine might have evaporated eventually, but not before tainting the meat with its rough taste. The great Christmas dinner was officially ruined.

"I'm so incredibly sorry!" Barry said. "I have no idea how this could have happened."

"Never mind," Kathy sighed, getting up to return to the turkey to the kitchen and throw it away. "Sorry, guys, but dinner is canceled. We'll need to find something else to eat."

"I'll order pizza!" Moira suggested.

"Pizza? On Christmas Eve?" Polly asked.

"Why not? We can't eat this fucking turkey..."

"Don't you fucking swear in front of Natalia, please!" Barry said.

"... and making another one will take hours!" Moira continued, unimpressed. "Claire's stomach will have imploded by then."

"It's okay, I was joking!" Claire said. "I'm not actually starving."

"And I don't see what's wrong with this meat!" Chris insisted, holding on to his plate when Kathy was offering to take it away. "I like it!"

"But you can't it eat it!" Claire pried the plate out of his hands and gave it to Kathy. "No more booze for you! Piers told us all what happened at that bar..."

Chris rolled his eyes. "Are you going to hold this against me for the rest of my life? I wasn't myself!"

"But your body doesn't care about that," Jill said. "You became an alcoholic earlier this year when you had no memory, and whether you were yourself or not, your body still needs to recover from that."

"Thanks, Jill!" Claire said, getting up to help Kathy with the dishes.

"So pizza it is then, okay?" Moira asked again, already on her way to the house phone. "You can try the cookies in the meantime, though..."

"Let me get this straight..." Alex came to life in Natalia's head once again. "Banana Boy is a horrible captain who gets his entire unit killed multiple times, allows himself to be sandwiched by monsters, gets drunk in a bar, claiming to not have been himself, and is still recovering from that, probably by means of the steroids he must be taking to retain a build like that... and you're honestly telling me that this _loser_ is the man who killed Albert? You've got to be shitting me!"

Natalia tried to ignore her, but Alex wouldn't stop complaining. "And who is this Piers guy they keep bringing up? Let me guess, he's that sniper puppy, the creepy stalker who asked that bitch Claire for old photos of her brother in one of those emails I hacked... Wow! No wonder he's always the only one to survive along with Chris, considering that he's probably operating his captain's sniper rifle with his full lips. Isn't he considerably younger than Banana Boy, though? Careful, Natalia, you should never be alone with him! I don't want to be raped by the guy who already fucked up my brother..."

"Be quiet!" Natalia whispered.

"But you still think he did a good thing, don't you? Sure. Let's ignore what kind of man he really is and celebrate the drunk pedophile who saved the world. And since the last time he did so was on Christmas, we should probably rename this festival to _Chris_ mas, don't you think? Cheers to Chris _Roooiiidfield_!"

" _Shut the fuck up already_!"

And everybody went silent. Seven pairs of eyes were suddenly staring at Natalia. Eight actually, since even the cat Jo stopped doing whatever naughty thing she had been doing to the Christmas tree to find out what was going on at the dinner table.

It took Natalia a few seconds to realize that she had spoken out load, and while Alex continued to mock both Chris and Claire in her head – "Redfield, Bedfield, Madfield... How about Deadfield?" – she pondered whether or not claiming to suffer from coprolalia would actually help her get out of this situation.

Barry was the first to recover his voice and cast a reproachful glance at Moira who had just returned from ordering pizza. "See? This is what happens when you swear to much around the child. You're a bad influence!"

"I'm not the one who poisoned the fucking turkey!" Moira retorted.

"Well, who poisoned it then?" Kathy asked.

Chris shrugged. "I still think it was quite nice... And alcohol is not poison..."

"It is for you, honey," Claire said, patting his arm.

Natalia was glad that everyone was still smiling and not taking her little outburst too seriously. But she feared it wasn't going to be the only one with Alex continuously speaking ill of her friends in her head. "Look how she calls him _honey_... and pats his arm... like an old married couple! Could it be that these two are more than just brother and sister? I wonder if Claire ever sent the sniper puppy that old photo of Banana Boy... Do you think Piers is the son of Chris and Claire?"

Shaking her head in disgust at the idea, Natalia swore to herself that she would start meditating as soon as possible... or whatever it was she needed to do to get that foul-mouthed nuisance out of her mind.

"So, who wants cookies?" Polly asked getting up from her chair, ready to hurry to the kitchen.

"No, not the cookies!" Natalia said. As everybody was staring at her once again, she looked at Kathy and said: "You always say it's bad to eat sweets before dinner because they could trick us into believing we're sated when we really aren't."

"True," Kathy said. "I just didn't think you were actually listening."

Ignoring that comment, Natalia continued: "Why don't we just wait for the pizza and have the cookies later? We could exchange gifts in the meantime."

"That's actually not a bad idea," Jill said.

Natalia wasn't so sure about that, but it was still the best idea she could come up with at the moment. She hadn't forgotten that the presents Jill and the others brought were the only ones with the right names on them and everyone was soon going to be pretty dumbfounded, but that was an inevitable disaster; the cookies, on the other hand, didn't have to be.

"Okay then. Stay where you are and don't touch the presents yet! I'll be right back," Barry said ominously before leaving the room.

"What is he up to?" Claire asked.

"Something I told him not to do because of how utterly ridiculous it is, but..." Kathy shook her head, but she did so with a smile. "Just wait and see."

"I'm going to get my presents," Natalia announced before leaving the room as well. Since Alex hadn't let her do anything on her own all day, she had yet to put the presents she had prepared for the others under the tree. But before she went upstairs to her room, she took a slight detour to the kitchen to get rid of the spoiled cookies. If anyone asked, she would say the cat ate them. One less problem to worry about.

"Do you really think the others will rejoice over that useless filth you got them?" Alex asked, condescendingly watching her from the mirror as she dug up her presents from under the bed.

"I'm not speaking to you!" Natalia said firmly.

What she had for the others wasn't much. Her pocket money was just not enough to get everybody a decent present, so she had resorted to creating things on her own by drawing pictures, building little figurines and tinkering. Every item she had created this way was unique, and she hoped the others would appreciate them.

"What a sad waste of time and effort!" Alex said. "We went to the storm shelter. We saw that those people didn't get you anything. And here you are, still eager to please them."

"Whatever." Without paying any attention to the mirror, Natalia switched off the light and went back downstairs with her presents.

Not long after her, Barry returned to the living room, now wearing a big, red Santa Claus suit along with an artificial white beard. He looked ridiculous, but incredibly endearing at the same time.

"Ho, ho, ho!" he said in a deep voice, sitting down on the chair next to the tree that Kathy had put there for him. "I hope you've all been good this year! Because I see a lot of presents here that I'll have to take back with me to the North Pole otherwise, and it was already so exhausting to get them here! So, who's first?"

"You're not serious about this, are you, Dad?" Moira asked, her arms folded on her chest.

"Who is this _Dad_ you're talking about? I'm Santa Claus! But it looks like we have a nonbeliever here, so maybe we should start with her."

Moira rolled her eyes, laughing. "There's no fucking way I'm going to sit on your lap and make a wish!"

But resistance was futile, as her sisters worked together to push Moira towards her father and make her sit on his lap anyway.

"First I have to ask: Have you been good this year?"

"No," Moira replied, her arms still folded. "I've been very, very naughty."

"Well, then let's see if there's anything here that could inspire you to be a better girl next year... Ah, there it is!" He bent over to pick up the flat, rectangular present that had her name on it, as well as a bigger one, probably from Claire, and the little figurine Natalia had made.

Claire's box contained an expensive-looking sweater with a skull on it that she and Polly had bought together. Moira liked it a lot, and contrary to what Alex had predicted, she was also very happy with Natalia's figurine. However, the small present that was her long-lost phone just made her wrinkle her forehead in dissatisfaction.

"What the hell?" she asked, casting questioning glances at everyone around her.

Knowing that that was not exactly what he'd had in mind for her, Santa Barry seemed just as confused as she was, but when she looked at him, he just said: "Well, be a better girl next year, and maybe you'll get something you don't already have."

Even Moira, who was always so quick-witted, couldn't think of a proper way to respond to this, got up from Barry's lap and moved to the couch to keep wondering about this terribly unfunny prank her family had pulled on her.

The rock music that was actually supposed to be Moira's present ended up in Polly's hands instead, yet Polly couldn't stand rock music. The little square-shaped box that Natalia remembered from the storm shelter with Kathy's name on it was given to Claire instead, who didn't understand why the Burtons would gift her expensive jewelry of the kind that a husband usually gave to his wife for their anniversary. Jill couldn't care less about the superhero comic books she got, Chris – the only one who wasn't forced to sit on Barry's lap because he was just too big for that – had no use for a book about motorbikes, and whatever had happened to the designer purse intended for Polly was anyone's guess. Natalia took a wild one and came to the conclusion that it was probably Barry's now.

They were about to find out soon, but first it was Kathy's turn to receive her presents before Santa Barry would open his. Natalia insisted on being the last one, so she could first confuse everybody and then explain to them that she was the one behind the swapping of the presents. She was going to make it appear as a joke and hope they would forgive her.

But that was a grave mistake. She looked away for just one second, distracted by the cat who was playing with the curtains, and that short moment was enough for Barry to hand his wife the present containing the wine bottle. The wine bottle that no longer contained wine.

Natalia's eyes widened in shock when she remembered what it contained now, and she downright jumped towards her new parents to stop them from unwrapping it, but it was too late. The bottle exploded, setting the tree on fire, and Alex couldn't stop laughing.


	4. Epilogue

Epilogue

Natalia couldn't stop crying. After the wine bottle exploded, everyone had been busy trying to put out the fire, saving what could be saved from the living room and making sure the others were okay. No one got hurt, the damage turned out to be not as severe as it had seemed at first, and there had been no time to blame anyone.

But that time was going to come faster than Natalia could find an excuse. In fact, there was no excuse. There was only the truth, and that she couldn't tell her family.

She was sitting on a bench on the porch, wrapped in her blue cardigan like a present nobody wanted, holding Lottie in her arms and watching the house on the opposite side of the empty street. Her neighbors had three children as well, one of which was even the same age as her, but she was pretty sure that boy was not crazy like her. That family was celebrating Christmas as it should be celebrated, not having to worry about the youngest member turning batshit crazy and trying to blow them all up. That was something only the Burtons had to put up with.

The door opened, Natalia quickly wiped the tears off her face and got ready to be yelled at, to accept her punishment. The others must have figured out by now that the exploding bottle and everything else that had gone wrong this evening was her doing. But to her surprise, the person who came out wasn't Barry, Kathy or one of her sisters. It was Jill, the woman with the BOW aura.

"Hey, Christmas Girl!" she said in a soft voice. "Aren't you getting a little cold out here?"

"No... Why are you calling me that?"

"Christmas Girl? Well, I thought it was fitting."

Natalia didn't think so at all. She wasn't Christmas Girl. If anything, she was Christ _mess_ Girl.

"You know, _Natalia_ sounds a lot like _Natale_ , the Italian word for Christmas," Jill said, sitting down next to her. "Sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

"It's okay. When you put it like that, I actually like it," Natalia said. "So you speak Italian?"

"A little."

"How did you learn it?"

Maybe this conversation was just what she needed right now. To get her mind off things.

"That woman, Excella Gionne... She was Albert Wesker's partner in crime, so to speak. Has Barry told you about Wesker? And what he did to me?"

Natalia nodded, even though she only knew half of the story.

"In those three years I spent in Wesker's captivity, I became something like... a toy for Excella," Jill said. "I had to do whatever she asked, but sometimes she had a little too much fun giving me orders in Italian, her native language, that naturally I couldn't understand. And then she punished me for not following her orders..."

Natalia rolled her eyes. That sounded an awful lot like something Alex would do.

"Anyway, I picked up a few things, and when I was finally able to break free from Excella and Wesker's influence, I decided to delve deeper into that language. Those three years in captivity were so terrible that I don't even want to remember them most of the time, but they're a part of me now, and learning Italian helps me come to terms with that. It's the one good thing that has emerged from the darkest times of my life... And it's not like I had anything better to do during my therapy anyway."

"Why did you have to do anything that woman told you to?" Natalia asked.

"Because I had no choice. Wesker had developed that... mind-controlling virus he used on me."

"So he basically decided what he wanted you to do, and you had to do it, whether you wanted to or not?"

"Pretty much, yes. And the worst part is: I was fully aware of everything I did under his control. And I did some truly horrible things that I would never have done of my own free will. But I couldn't stop myself. My body was nothing but a puppet with Wesker pulling the strings."

That sounded familiar. In fact, it sounded _so_ familiar that Natalia was toying with idea of telling Jill something she had never told anyone else before. Something no one else might ever be able to fully comprehend. No one but another person who had been abused by a Wesker in a similar way.

"I have this... voice inside my head." The words came out of her mouth before she could even think them through. "It tells me to do things I don't want to do. And sometimes it becomes more than just a voice. Sometimes it..."

"... takes over?"

Natalia nodded.

"I thought so," Jill said. When the little girl then looked at her with wide eyes, she asked: "It was you, wasn't it? You swapped the names on the presents, poured alcohol into the turkey and prepared the bomb that set the tree on fire. But at the same time, it wasn't really you. It was that _other_ you."

"Please keep this to yourself! This family is everything I have, I don't want to lose it. Coming here has made me happy for the first time since my parents died, and I don't even want to _think_ about returning to the orphanage. So please, you can't tell anyone!"

"I won't. Not if you don't want me to. You know, I understand what you're going through. As I said before, Wesker forced me to do things that made me despise myself. Things I haven't told anyone about, not even Chris, even though he's the closest thing to family I have left."

"Wouldn't he understand? If you're that close?"

"Of course he would. But," Jill said, pausing significantly, "so would Barry if you told him."

Natalia lowered her head.

"I know," Jill said. "There's nothing to justify. Sometimes it doesn't matter if people would understand or not. Some tales should just never be told, simply because you're uncomfortable telling them. Because some things might forever change the way people look at you, even if they deny it."

"But what should I do?" Natalia asked. "Is there even anything I _can_ do? How did you break free from Wesker's control?"

"To be honest, I didn't. I managed to fight the influence every now and then, but couldn't get rid of it entirely until Chris freed me of the device that was keeping me prisoner. But that device could only do that because it was continuously injecting me with a chemical that made me susceptible to manipulation. Once the chemical was gone, I was free. And now you must find _your_ chemical. It doesn't have to be a chemical in the strict sense of the word, but the thing that is making you vulnerable. It could be an emotion, for example. Find out what it is that allows this voice in your head to take control every now and then, and fight it!"

Jill was right. Alex wasn't always there, sometimes she was even gone for quite a long time, sometimes she took control, and sometimes she didn't. There had to be a reason for that, some kind of trigger.

"But I don't know how to do that," Natalia said. "Will you help me?"

"Of course I'll help you! I will think about this, and together we will come up with a way to fight the darkness inside you. Don't ever let it beat you!"

Natalia was so relieved, she felt like she was going to cry again. She still had a long way ahead of her, but at least she wasn't alone anymore. Jill was there, someone who understood, someone who wouldn't tell anyone else about this until they figured out what to do. It was a start.

"By the way... Here's something to lighten up your mood." Jill gave Natalia a small present. At first it looked liked Moira's phone in wrapping paper, but it was square-shaped, not rectangular, and a lot flatter.

"What's that?" Natalia asked.

"Open it and you'll know!"

It was a CD cover. Inside was CD with Natalia's face printed on it, and an inscription that read _The Sluice Master_.

"It's a video game starring you as the player character, programmed by a workmate of mine, Quint Cetcham," Jill explained. "Barry commissioned it. To be honest, I have no idea what _Sluice Master_ even means, I guess it's an inside joke just like the one with the sandwiches, but the look on your face tells me you know exactly what it means, and that you like it."

"I love it!" Natalia couldn't even find words to describe how happy this little disc made her. So that was the reason she hadn't found anything for herself in the storm shelter – her present hadn't even been there yet. But that game was certainly the best, most creative present she could think of. She could hardly wait to try it out.

"Let's get back inside," Jill suggested. "There's more for you, you know. We just didn't find the time to give it to you yet because of certain burning tree disasters."

"What are we going to tell the others about everything what went wrong?" Natalia asked.

"We'll figure something out. Let's go now, it's quite freezing out here! Just make sure you go to the bathroom first, do something about those teary, red eyes, or everyone will see you've been crying."

Upon returning inside, Natalia noticed that all the little accidents hadn't ruined the Christmas mood at all. Everyone had finally received the presents that were meant for them, and given back those that belonged to others. Well, everyone except Barry, much to the others' amusement.

"Dad, are you sure you don't need this beautiful football jersey we got you?" Polly asked.

"I will always need that jersey. But for now, I have _this_!" he said, proudly showing off with a certain pink designer purse.

Moira, finally reunited with her beloved phone, quickly took a photo of her father exploring his feminine side before he changed his mind, Chris was on the phone telling Piers about his comic books, Claire was eating chocolate while browsing through her book about motorbikes, and Kathy was wearing her shiny new jewelry. It turned out the sandwich maker was actually for Jill, and now that she could use it to make sandwiches for everyone, they didn't even need the pizza they had ordered anymore. Against all odds, everyone was happy.

Natalia did as Jill had told her and went to the bathroom before joining the others. Jill had been right about many things tonight, and Natalia's face was one of them: it looked too sad for the occasion, so she washed it in order to remove all the traces that she had been crying. But when she looked into the mirror again, what she saw was no longer her own face – or it was in a way, but different. That face belonged to her other self.

"So are you finally going to stop whining?" Alex asked. "It's your own fault after all. If you weren't so boring, this evening could have been a lot more fun for both of us."

Natalia wasn't going to have any more of this. Encouraged by her new positive attitude, she looked her dark mirror image directly in the eyes as she said: "I may not be able to stop you from swapping names on presents, turning the food inedible, burning the Christmas tree and speaking ill of my friends. You've already done all of that. But if there's one thing you're not going to ruin, it's my life with this family. No matter how hard you try, I can't even be truly mad at you because deep down, all I really feel for you is pity. Pity because you never got to know what it's like to have a family, especially now on Christmas Eve, a time of the year when everyone truly realizes that family and loved ones are the most important things in life. That there are people who will always understand and love you. That's something you will never have, and for that I am sorry."

She was expecting a biting reply from Alex, but it never came. The girl behind the glass just looked at her a little longer, then she disappeared, and all that was left was Natalia's own natural mirror image. For the first time in forever, she was able to genuinely smile again. That was a face she could definitely put on to join the others, and she didn't want to keep them waiting any longer. Neither did Lottie.

Alex was pleased as she watched Natalia celebrate with her new family. So she hadn't succeeded in ruining Christmas – but that had never been her real plan anyway.

This year's Christmas Eve was nothing but the chess board she had set up to ultimately conquer the king and the queen, namely the Redfield siblings. Four years ago, Chris had killed Albert and thus taken away the only person Alex had ever truly cared about, the man she called her brother even though they were not related by blood. And then Claire had killed her – not the part of her soul that she had successfully managed to transfer into Natalia, just her old shell after it had turned into a hideous monster, but it was the thought that counted. The right to be a god was hers, and hers alone! Who did that little Claire bitch think she was, assuming she could just kill a god?

But now Alex was going to return the favor by taking everything that Chris and Claire held dear away from them, just as they had taken Albert from her, and then she would kill them slowly and painfully, using the guise of an innocent little girl nobody would ever suspect.

One of her immediate goals was to drive Natalia so desperate she could no longer keep her condition to herself, and just as predicted by Alex, she had eventually poured her heart out to Jill Valentine, who had gone through a similar ordeal, and who was no stranger to Alex either. She had never met Jill in person before this night, but was very aware of what Albert had done to her, and now that the connection between Natalia and Jill had been established, it was only a matter of time until she was also introduced to Piers Nivans, Sherry Birkin and whoever else Chris and Claire had a friendly relationship with. Alex wasn't planning on letting any of them escape.

But she would take her sweet time picking them off one by one until only the two siblings remained, and then they would experience all the loneliness and despair they had bestowed on her. The worst was yet to come – and the world was going to be very afraid.

– The End –

* * *

Special thanks to **Jen** for listening to my ideas, encouraging me to write this story and proofreading it. **Merry Christmas everyone!**


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